George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Lessons from Eric Garner

In the aftermath of the awful failure to indict Eric Garner's killer today in New York City - Staten Island, to be more precise - I can think of at least three important lessons we can get from this, as we all seek to create a world with fewer such killings of unarmed people by police in the future:

1. Guns are not the ultimate problem. Eric Garner, after all, was choked to death by a police officer. What this means, even though it might sound like an NRA mantra, if that law-abiding citizens have little to fear from good cops with guns, but are in dire danger from bad cops with just sticks and strong arms. I think our world would indeed be far better off with fewer guns. But the ultimate source of the depravity that took Eric Garner's life is a reckless disregard for human life in the hearts and minds of all too many police officers.

2. Body cams will help, but will not completely remedy this deadly problem. There was a video, after all, of Eric Garner and the last moments of his life. It's heart-wrenching and infuriating to watch, but apparently had no effect on the Grand Jury. In this case, the medium was not the message, or failed to deliver it. Again, what we most need are not police with body cams but police divested of their reckless disregard for human life.

3. The DA is obviously a big part of this problem - and we learned this not only today, but with the Grand Jury's failure to indict Michael Brown's killer in Ferguson last week. As many have suggested, a special prosecutor should have been appointed in both cases - that is, a prosecutor with no working ties with the very police under possible indictment. The law should be changed to make this mandatory.

It strikes me that all of three lessons might be taken to heart by conservatives as well as progressives. This is not an anti-gun or a pro-body-cam campaign. It's rather an insistence that people who become police not display a depraved indifference to human life - and, when they do, they be held to account for their actions.

About Me

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication &
Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.His 8 nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997),
Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2nd edition 2012), have been the
subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science
Monitor, and have been translated into 12 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), TheConsciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To SaveSocrates (2006, ebook 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013).His short stories
have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards.Paul Levinson appears on "The
O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News,"“NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS),“Nightline” (ABC), NPR, and numerous
national and international TV and radio programs. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2009 (CD) and 2010 (remastered vinyl). He reviews the best of
television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of
Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

e-mail received from a reader:Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchidren. Thanks! Tom